Multiphonics on vibrating strings have been an important element in my compositions since the early 1990s. In order to calculate the frequency components of so-called pure multiphonics (multiphonics consisting of harmonic partials of the fundamental) on vibrating strings, I developed my fraction windowing algorithm. The first section of this article details the use of multiphonics in my compositions and the second section discusses how the fraction windowing algorithm works and its relationship to the closely related mathematical concept of a continued fraction. The article also discusses the online apps I have developed as tools for composers and performers who are interested in using these methods in their own work on string multiphonics.

Considerable research has been made into the harmonic properties and playability of woodwind multiphonics, while the utility of string multiphonics has received far less attention. In recent years, however, there has been an increasing amount of interest in the topic, and several publications have been devoted to acoustic guitar multiphonics. Primarily written for non-guitarist composers, these studies range from the scientific to the practical. Variously, they describe the sonic qualities of the multiphonics, discuss methods of performing them, or examine their spectral content and morphology. Until now, published research into guitar multiphonics has been limited to the acoustic guitar and has examined only its three lower strings. In this study, we analyse multiphonics on all six strings of the electric guitar and present a catalogue of harmonic aggregates on strings 3–1. We test these multiphonics on five different guitars and examine their response to three commonly used analogue effect pedals (compression, overdrive and distortion). In order to precisely indicate the spectral components and harmonic nodes, we have used the Extended Helmholtz-Ellis JI Pitch Notation (HEJI).

This article presents selected results from a research project on cello multiphonics at the Hochschule für Musik Basel within which I am producing updated fingering charts in a smartphone application and affiliated online repository. The article details work that has informed this resource and illustrates results that reveal critical questions and point to future areas of interest. I begin by introducing cello multiphonics and contextualising my previous findings, then discuss pitch content, ‘chain’ multiphonics and the balance and intonation of multiphonic components.

Earlier this year I was contacted by Ellen Fallowfield who asked me to look into multiphonics on the harp. I was curious but also rather sceptical: although I could immediately find multiphonics in several places on the string, I worried that their use would be impractical. This article takes a practical look at multiphonics on the harp from a performer's point of view. I share my initial observations about their production, sound and predictability as well as their relationship to other harmonics on the harp. It is my hope that the article will lead to further investigation of this fascinating topic.

This article forms part of ‘The Microtonal Piano – and the tuned-in interpreter’, an ongoing artistic research project at the Norwegian Academy of Music that seeks to demonstrate how microtonality can increase the expressive possibilities of the acoustic piano. Many different modes of playing can result in microtonal sounds, and this article presents a preliminary overview of these possibilities. For the project, new works have been commissioned from several composers, and different aspects of microtonal modes of playing are integrated into these works. Multiphonics is obviously one of these modes of playing, as it most often results in microtonality. At the end of the article, different ways that multiphonics can be modified when used in combination with some of the other microtonal modes of playing are suggested.

Natural harmonics, i.e. partials and their harmonic series, may be isolated on a vibrating string by lightly touching specific points along its length. In addition to the two endpoints, stationary nodes for a given partial n present themselves at n − 1 locations along the string, dividing it into n parts of equal length. It is not the case, however, that touching any one of these nodes will necessarily isolate the nth partial and its integer multiples. The subset of nodes that will activate the nth partial (termed playable nodes by the authors) may be derived by following a mathematically predictable pattern described by so-called Farey sequences. The authors derive properties of these sequences and connect them to physical phenomena. This article describes various musical applications: locating single natural harmonics, forming melodies of neighbouring harmonics, sounding multiphonic aggregates, as well as predicting the relative tuneability of just intervals.

At the end of June, I had the unsettling pleasure of wandering through a blue fringed curtain and into the backroom-disco of Rowland Hill's miniaturised Eurodance clubnight. Presented at Post-Paradise in Birmingham, Interesting Times was a foreboding inoculation of nineties ‘lyrical optimism [in] an emotively charged minor key’. La Cream, Alice Deejay, Phutura, Aqua Ninja: their tracks have, as Hill writes in the programme notes, ‘melodies reminiscent of breaking news sound effects and beats that suggest states of both euphoria and emergency’ – this is music that brings an ‘unsettling blend of doubt and hopefulness’. Sash!’s ‘Mysterious Times’ opens with samples of thunder, later including the line ‘We're counting the hours and days to the end of all time’.

When Eleanor Knight began researching her libretto for Silk Moth, she had to decide how to frame an opera about honour violence. Meeting women whose lives it had ruptured through the Iranian and Kurdish Women's Rights Organisation, she confronted the usual images that accompany the dozen-or-so honour killings per year in the UK media. Between the ‘old, faded school photos’ that illustrate victimhood and the male perpetrators with ‘blankets over their heads … shoved into waiting police cars’, she saw a gulf of painful complexity. ‘What’, she asks, ‘of the mothers?’.